Towards a reference architecture of crowdsourcing integration in early warning systems

Crowdsourcing has the potential to become a crucial information source in disaster management. In order to become effective as an integrated part of disaster management systems it is important to set the general architectural foundations for such integrations beyond prototypical experiments. This paper discusses general architectural principles of the application of crowdsourcing in Early Warning Systems (EWS). An integrated architecture is proposed to use classical sensor data and crowdsourcing in an EWS solution. Therefore, typical components of crowdsourcing applications are identified and mapped to monitoring subsystems of EWS’s. Three main structural variants of applying crowdsourcing in early warning systems along the example of a prototypical extension of two existing large-scale hydro-meteorological warning systems are presented.